Friday night's cinema trip saw
Mark Wahlberg
monologuing his little socks off through this espionage-action-thriller. Catch
up on the trailer below:
After some character introduction, scene-setting and plot exposition the movie
eventually gets to the crux: an asset needs transporting
twenty two miles (ah, right) to an extraction point. This (probably not
a spoiler) doesn't go entirely to plan.
John Malkovich
tells them they need to get there quickly; no delays. There are plenty of
delays and they, naturally, get there just in time.
It's a pretty violent film with guns, explosions, blood, death and some pretty
impressive martial arts scenes courtsey of
Iko Uwais
(fans of
The Raid
movies will recognise this name). There's a decent core story delivered by
some famous names (Lauren Cohen
will be a lot more famous in my head once I've finally got around to watching
The Walking Dead), and on the whole I enjoyed the experience.
That said, there's a lot of padding for such a short movie (94 minutes).
There's a sort of narrative device which sees Wahlberg popping up every so
often part-way through an interview which is evidently a post-balls-up
inquiry. This goes nowhere. His character's super-intelligence and the fact
that he's somewhere on the autistic spectrum is regularly mentioned, though
this has no bearing on the plot other than to be occasionally used by the
other characters to explain away him being an arsehole at points. There's a
nuclear weapons/ terrorism backdrop which also doesn't really come to anything
and appears to be a bit of a red herring to draw viewers away from the plot
twist, which really isn't groundbreaking enough to require being drawn away
from.
Also, it's pretty derivative. There's a street shootout that isn't quite
Heat. Uwais runs around an apartment block decking people with cool moves, but it
isn't The Raid. There's even a little
Ronin
in there somewhere.
Ignore all that, though, and it's not a terrible way to spend 94 minutes if
you're into action movies and like a bit of Wahlberg. It's forgettable, a bit
confusing at points, and probably has some enormous plot holes if you think
too deeply about it, but if a bit of Friday night violence is your thing, it's
better than heading into town and baiting the big guy at the bar, and you get
a thick smear of psuedo-plot thrown into the bargain.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hi, thanks for commenting. If you feel passionately about anything I've posted, please feel free to make your views known but please take the time to make sure that your comments are rational, considered and suitable for any audience.
Thanks for reading!